theological acrimony and exaggeration : 3,000 men were executed in political precaution, and 10,000 were drugged and intoxicated, who consequently fought between themselves. For these sins he suffered from an illness, 'his body reaching the hell in bits '.* Now let us consider the direction into which the conquests of Bindusara lay. I cannot agree with Mr. Vincent Smith (Early History, p. 38) that the limits of the Nanda dominions cannot be defined. An analysis of the available data † shows that the valleys of the Jamuna and the Ganges and the country up to the Narmada in the west, i.e., nearly the whole of Northern India, except the Punjab, Sind, and Northern Rajputana, had passed under 'the one-umbrella' of Padma the Great, before the rise of Chandragupta.‡ Chandragupta undoubtedly added to that vast empire the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and presumably also (as it appears from the Arthasastra) Nepal and Kashmir.

There is an indication of the fact that Chandragupta could not have diverted his attention to the South, that his work in the North fully occupied his attention. Apart from his war and a constant vigilance against his Hellenic neighbours§ he had still to obliterate a number of republics in Sind, the Punjab, and on the slopes of the Himalayas. The Arthasastra (pages 376-379) lays down minute directions for their reduction.

According to the Divyavadana, Radha-gupta was the Chancellor in the last days of Bindusara. It seems that Radha-gupta succeeded Chanakya. + Saisunaka Chronology, § 22, J. B. O. R. S., 1.

Chandragupta not only succeeded to the vast territories of the Magadha empire, but also to the systems of that empire. The most noticeable features of that system are two : a large standing army strong in infantry and war-elephants, and a resourceful financial policy. The Jainas accuse the Nandas of having introduced the practice of taxing hide : skins and furs are carefully taxed in the Arthasastra. The system of raising revenue by leasing out state lands watered by well-kept canals, came down from the earlier empire of Maga dha. The earlier Magadha sovereigns were long remembered in Orissa for their irrigation schemes. The fabulons wealth attributed to the Nandas by romance had its basis in the successful financial policy of Maha Padma.

§ The Arthasastra is full of jealousy towards the Mlechchha. He, as a spy, is to be detected amidst the Hindus ('the Aryas') by most artful means. An active system of contre-espionage seems to have been at work.

Conquests of the
Bindusara,

predecessors of

Conquests of Bindusara,

Enclaves

We are told by Taranatha, who no doubt draws on former authorities, that Bindusära undertook a war which removed kings and ministers of about 16 capitals. These kings could not have possibly existed in the North. They must have been, therefore, petty sovereigns of the peninsula 'between the Eastern and the Western oceans'. The number 16 of capitals shows that the annexation must have extended over a considerable area. We get a confirmation of this from the site of the Siddapura (Mysore) inscription. In the light of the data in Taranāthā, we can now assert with some confidence that the parts south of the Narmada which Asoka inherited from his father, that is, up to about Madras, had been conquered by Bindusăra.*

In the vast empire of Bindusăra from Madras up to the Persian frontier there were two large enclaves of independent states. They were the powerful kingdom of the Andhrast between the Gōdāvary and the Krishna, and that of its neighbours the Kalingas. How had they been avoided in the march towards Madras from the North? Why had they not been first subjugated, for the route from Magadha lay through the Kalinga and Andhra territories? The Maharashtra and Western ghat route had the barrier of the smaller independent organisations of the Bhojas, the Rashtrikas, the Satyaputra and the Keralaputra.

*Cf. also Mr. Vincent Smith, E. H. I., pages 130-140.

The Andhras have been called a 'protected state of Asoka. There does not seem to be any warrant for this. I am afraid, a modern idea has been unconsciously imported into Mauryan history. A 'protected' large kingdom, as the Andhras had would be against all the theories and facts of the early Mauryan system. Rockedict XIII which says that the Dharmanusasti of the King was followed amongst the Andbras, suggested to scholars a political subordination of the Andhras. But it places the Greeks (probably of Bactria) in the same category The Greeks were certainly not protected'. If the Greeks, the Nabhak as (Nabaeteans?) and the Andhras by following the Dharmanusasti of the King are to be considered as political inferiors, Antiochos and others also would be no better. They were in the dominions conquered' by Asoka through his Dharma! To my mind it means nothing more than this, that even peoples outside the pale of Hindu civilization and his dominions followed the ethics accepted by Asoka.

The Andhras, on the evidence of Megasthenes, were very powerful, second only to the Imperial power. They could not be reduced easily. Their neighbours (and probably also their friends), the Kalingas, seem to have been gifted with rare resources and recuperative energy.* It was not a wise step to engage with such dangerous foes. A number of small and weak states, to the south of the Krishna, therefore, were first subjugated by Bindusăra. To gain a foothold in the rear of the two formidable foes and thus to place them between two fires, seems to have been the policy followed.

The explanation of the other question-how the enclaves were Navy, avoided in the Imperial march to the South-appears to be this: the history of the time of Vijaya was repeated. The department of the administration of navy (described by Megasthenes) must have solved the problem. The Imperial ships which carried embassies between India and Ceylon, and presumably also between India and Alexandria, must have carried and landed Imperial forces on the coast of Madras.

As oka,

It is not difficult to guess what would have been the fate of Failure of the Andhras and the remaining states if Asoka had not turned a political quaker. Had he continued his predecessors' policy, he might have brought actually the whole of Jambudvipa, from the confines of Persia up to Cape Comorin, 'under the umbrella of one sovereignty', an ideal which has remained ever since. unrealized. The accident of the presence on the throne, at a particular juncture in history, of a man who was designed by nature to fill the chair of an abbot, put back events not by centuries but by milleniums.

* They re-asserted their independence once after the Nandan conquest and again during the rule of the later Mauryas, both times for comparatively short periods. The Kalingas along with other advantages were very strong in war-elephants. The Mahabharata (Bhishma Parva) assigns the largest number of clephants to the king of Kalinga.

MISCELLANEOUS CONTRIBUTIONS.

I.—Note on the occurrence of copper celts in Manbhum.

By the Hon'ble and Rev. Dr. A. Campbell, D.D.

To my own knowledge 27 specimens of copper axe-heads have been found in the Manbhum district. I got possession of 24; other three that were brought to me I did not take, as, not knowing these bits of copper were of so great interest, I grudged to pay the price to secure them.

There is a range of low hills running almost due east from Paresnath to Pokhuria in the north of the Dhanbad Subdivision, North of this range of hills is the Barākar river, which is the boundary between Manbhum and the Santal Parganās, and further west the boundary between Manbhum and Hāzāribāgh. The axeheads have so far all been found in the stretch of country between the hills and the Barakar river.

The first, and one of the finest specimens, came into my possession 35 years ago. The Manjhi of the village of Bisuädih, which is close to Pokhuria, informed me that there was something lying in the jungle in his village. No one knew what it was. It had lain there for a long time and no one had the courage to go close to it to examine it. The herdboys were in the habit, when in that part of the jungle, of going as close to it as they dared, throwing stone in it to make it ring and then flying as fast as they could. I was interested and sent a Christian young man to bring it; no non-Christian dared to go near it. I have shown this particular specimen to many, but no one could give me any idea of what it really was. Rai Bahadur Nanda Gopal Banarji of Purulia gave it as his opinion that it had been used as a halo behind the head of an image.